Ubuntu vs Fedora vs Linux Mint

Fedora
is from Red Hat. Linus uses it.
Fedora doesn't seem to be known for any specialized take.

Ubuntu
is a distro specialized for dummies, but in many ways it's much smooth, but is still Linux that you can change anything if you know what u doing.

Oracle VM VirtualBox

VirtualBox is really fantastic. Because you can use it like a sandbox. Try multiple OSes. Also, you can try unix things that normally you wouldn't, because if screwed up, you can just discard it. You can also use it to visit malware sites, etc. Great for experimentation and learning.

if you haven't already, it's worth a try, even if it meant spending a few days to get familiar with it.

• copy/paste between guest/host needs to have “guest additions” installed. “guest additions” is to be installed in the guest OS. While guest OS is running, use menu 〖Devices ▸ install Guest Additions…〗. When done, restart guest OS.

Which Unity Are You Running?

Ubuntu 11.10 runs the GUI called Unity. It shows a launch bar on the left.

Note: there's “Unity 3D” and “Unity 2D”.
The “Unity 3D” is often just written as Unity. They look almost identical, but are entirely different implementations.
The 2D one is for systems with weak graphics card. (i.e. when you run from VirtualBox)
Many discussions online about configuring Unity is about Unity 3D.
So, beware.
Reference:
askubuntu.com am i using unity or unity 2d,
askubuntu.com How do I configure Unity 2D?

Unity 3D (left) and Unity 2D (right)

How to Tell If You Are Using Unity or Unity 2D

press 【Ctrl+Alt+t】 opens a new terminal, then type
echo $DESKTOP_SESSION it'll print “ubuntu-2d” if you are on 2d, else it's just “ubuntu”.

Or, type pgrep -l unity. If the result contains “unity-2d-launch”, then you are on 2d.

Ubuntu GUI Issues

• the ❖ Window key pops up the Ubuntu launch bar.

• to re-arrange the app icon in launcher bar, click and hold first.

• To show menu in gnome-terminal, press Alt key. Or just move mouse to the screen top menu bar.

• Right click in general brings up up context menu. Also, ▤ Menu key works.

• Middle click on window title bar send the window to back.

• You can set single click to open folder. Just go to the menu 〖Edit ▸ Prefernces〗 while in a folder.

a decade ago, this would be unthinkable. The f￼cking tech geekers will say you are a idiot, and shell means shell. That is, unix shell, console, terminal emulator, the shebang stuff.

FOSS FUD

lies. fud from unix ran rampant. quote from info chroot:

(1) However, some systems (e.g., FreeBSD) can be configured to allow
certain regular users to use the `chroot' system call, and hence to run
this program. Also, on Cygwin, anyone can run the `chroot' command,
because the underlying function is non-privileged due to lack of
support in MS-Windows.

On April 28, 2007, Valkonen warned the Arch Linux maintainers of possible legal action because the (unofficial) Arch User Repository contained scripts to install Ion3 with patches he did not approve of.[5] Later on he did the same with the pkgsrc maintainer of the NetBSD project[6] and the ports maintainer of the FreeBSD project.[7] As of December 12, 2007,[8] the development branch of Ion, along with other software by Valkonen, was pulled[9] from the FreeBSD ports tree, after the author filed a complaint about outdated development releases still being available. Any version of Ion may still be installed from source code on any Unix system with proper libraries and dependencies.

Valkonen has implied in several mailing lists that he has become completely disillusioned with, if not openly hostile toward, the free software community in general. He plans to switch to developing strictly closed-source software for the Windows platform in the future,[10] presumably following the stable release of the Ion3 branch. Subsequently the author has indeed given up on *nix and started using Windows instead.[11]